


His Dark Materials AU

by narcomanic



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:57:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4087774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcomanic/pseuds/narcomanic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of snippets of scenes rewritten in a His Dark Materials/daemon!AU, ranging from the first book to <i>Broken Homes</i>. More may be added in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To help you out, here's a list of people's daemons and their names.
> 
> Peter - raven, Adelaide  
> Nightingale - jaguar, Aurelius (name and idea courtesy of [linndechir](http://linndechir.tumblr.com/)!)  
> Lesley - terrier, Sigurd  
> Varvara - Caucasian viper, Mstislav  
> Seawoll - bulldog, and so far nameless

Having a bird daemon was a bit of a two-edged sword.

With members of the general public, an IC3 guy like me with a raven tended to get a raised eyebrow and a quick glance from me to Adelaide and then back, this time with a sudden newfound respect. I guess they were expecting something a bit more exotic and rough around the edges, some great ape maybe, which only goes to show that most people are secretly more racist than they think.

The other side of the coin was that in a veritable dog kennel like the Met, a bird stood out like a sore thumb. Preconceptions on the subject of daemons aside, there was a certain tradition in the Old Bill and his trusty canine companion, always ready to metaphorically lift his leg whenever his territory may be threatened. That was my best mate Lesley and her governor down to a T, with their respective terrier and bulldog, the very picture of British constabulary. Whereas me and Adelaide? Well, in the words of a certain Inspector, I didn’t know what the hell I was.

The reason I was thinking about daemonic prejudices was that after a sequence of events both absurd and horrifying led me to try my hand at ghost spotting in Covent Garden, I noticed an IC1 guy watching me from across the plaza. As a police officer, being able to discern between a law-abiding gentleman out for a late walk and an aspiring cottager is a fairly basic skill, so I was feeling wrong-footed by being unable to put my finger on the man.

I took in the bespoke suit, the handmade shoes and the honest-to-god silver topped walking stick and figured I should keep my eye out for a soft-bodied mammal burrowed in a coat pocket or something small and fidgety on his shoulder, which was how I almost missed the sinewy movement two steps behind him. Though not quite the tropical forest it was adapted for, the mottled fur of the jaguar blended surprisingly well into the London evening, and its great paws were practically silent behind the tap of the man's Oxford heels.

“Hello,” he said in greeting. “What are you up to?”

Every response I could think of came out either implicitly flirtatious or unintentionally defensive, so I figured I should just try the honest approach. “I'm ghost hunting,” I said.

“Interesting,” he said, and I couldn't tell if he thought I was taking the piss or not.

“Any particular ghost?” another male voice spoke out, this one a notch deeper than its human's. Me and Adelaide both looked down at the jaguar in what I hope wasn't too obvious a surprise, before I caught myself. As I said, making assumptions based on your daemon was a bad habit.

“Nicholas Wallpenny,” Adelaide said in reply. This time the man exchanged the briefest of looks with his daemon before turning to me.

“What's your name and address?” he asked. Either this was the tackiest 'my place or yours' line I'd heard in my life or I'd severely misread the situation.

“I beg your pardon?” I said, and felt only moderately less confused when the man presented me with a warrant card for a Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale.

“Constable Peter Grant,” I introduced myself, and on my shoulder Adelaide shuffled a wing and did the same towards the jaguar. Who turned out to be named Aurelius, of fucking course.

The man returned his wallet to his coat. “You're out of Charing Cross nick?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded minutely to himself and, having come to a decision about God knows what, inclined his head to me. “Carry on, Constable.”

He left the way he'd come and his daemon lingered to politely meet eyes with Adelaide before following suit. I stood there long enough to make sure our voices wouldn't accidentally carry over and then turned to Adelaide.

“Okay, so... How screwed are we?”

She merely made an unhappy sound in response.

\- - -

Walking up the steps to Lesley, it did occur to me this was one of my dumbest ideas to date. That much was clear before the compulsion struck me full-force in the face and pushed me across the stage, inching closer and closer to the noose waiting for its theatrical hangman.

I barely had the time to recover from the after-effects of the _seducere_ ricocheting inside my head when another, much much worse sensation stole over me. It was a bone deep chill accompanied by a disorienting spell of dizziness, through which I was faintly aware of Adelaide's claws scratching against my jacket when she was brushed aside – and when I came to, there was a pair of thick hands forcing my head back into the noose.

Fighting a man like Seawoll would be hard on any day, not to mention when I was still swallowing down the shock and nausea over the violation and wondering again where Lesley was drawing the power to cast such a strong compulsion – strong enough to make a man ignore the ingrained taboo of touching another person's daemon. Jabbing the syringe into Seawoll's hand was nothing against that but damned if I didn't put all my effort into it. If he felt the pain, he sure as hell didn't show it.

The sound of frenzied yapping caught my attention and I twisted enough in Seawoll's grip to look down at the stage and felt my blood run just that bit colder. There was Adelaide, sprawled on the stage and nearly crushed by the weight of Seawoll's bulldog bearing down on her, all the while Sigurd bounced around them, his tail wagging as if this was all a game.

“Hoist away, boys,” I heard Lesley call and my cry for Adelaide was cut off together with my imminent air supply.

The next few moments were a blur of panic and fighting gravity. Had I been less worried about dying, I might've appreciated the irony. As it was, I just about avoided earning a very sad scar across my neck in return for what felt like a dislocated vertebra.

There was a gentle thud at my back and then a frantic scrabble of feathers and claws. “Peter? Are you okay?” I heard Adelaide's voice but couldn't quite turn my head enough to see her.

“Yup,” I replied once my vision had stopped blurring at the edges. “You?”

“Yeah,” she said after a pause that was a second too long.

Below us Lesley was gearing up into a rant that would've made Thatcher proud. The content was nothing new to anyone who'd ever been unduly exposed to the Daily Mail in their lives, but the delivery was what made my skin crawl. And it wasn't just her voice either – next to her Sigurd was growling and whining like he was itching to sink his teeth into someone. I realised I hadn't heard him speak since Punch took over the show and wondered if that's what prolonged sequestration did to a person's daemon – changed them from what made them daemons, a part of one's soul, and turned them into... into animals.

It would've been a fascinating question if not for the godawful timing. I refocused my efforts into gaining enough momentum to grab one of the stage curtains, since nobody seemed to be in a hurry to lower the noose any time soon. I'd just managed to make the leap and grab enough of a handhold to not fall to my death – or at the very least some severely broken bones – when the lights in the theatre went out. That alone would've been worrying, but then the noise started – a low growl, joined by a chitter, a screech, rising into a bray. The sound of an animal horde working up into a bloodlust. It made the hair on the back of my neck rise up.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I heard Lesley's voice in the dark. “I think it’s time to go out and play.”

\- - -

Dog fighting rinks are a kind of a tradition in and of themselves – it's what makes them easy to recognise even for London-grown city kids like myself. This one had followed the form down to the ratty old carpet covering the floor of the pit.

It had taken me a while to notice the conspicuous lack of blood on said carpet. Lesley – had she not been at the receiving end of a shotgun at the moment – would've no doubt pointed this out to me in her usual fashion. Then again, maybe having a terrier made her more sensitive to this particular thing.

Dogs bleed, you see. Daemons don't.

This uncomfortable revelation come and gone, I still kept staring at the ground, both to spare my already aching neck muscles and because the alternative was to look at Pink Face's ape daemon who had Adelaide tightly gripped in her creepily humanlike hands. Adelaide had put up a decent struggle until the other daemon, possibly a bonobo or something of the sort, had demonstrated just how easy it would be to unfold and break her wings.

Whatever Varvara Sidorovna was paying her hired muscle, it wasn't enough for them to follow her orders blindly. This came in handy when the Comrade Major herself walked in with two cans of gasoline and the muscle stopped to squabble long enough for me and Lesley to catch the familiar creak of an old handbrake. Despite Varvara's silent instructions to keep a close eye on us, I could see both the bonobo and Squinty Eyes' squirrel daemon, who was nominally guarding Sigurd, give their humans a nervous glance. I suppose they didn't quite trust their chances of survival with Comrade Major, a suspicion I couldn't honestly fault them for.

Especially not after the cavalry arrived and ripped off the front wall of the barn.

Amidst the thuds of falling bricks there was an animal scream and I saw the bonobo and the squirrel drop everything and run to the newly-appeared bodies of Pink Face and Squinty Eyes. Her captors distracted, Adelaide took the first opportunity to escape and landed smack dab on my chest, from where she hurried to huddle against my neck, as the air above crouching level had become a minefield of spells.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Aurelius bounding away in leaps – _outside_ Nightingale's shield – and barely dodging a fireball half his size from Varvara. Her own daemon, a slim little viper, was safely out of sight.

“Peter!”

The call of my name shook me out of my untimely admiration of the battle unfolding around us, and I refocused on the more immediate problem. The knocked out Max and Barry were showing signs of life again. In an unspoken agreement, me and Lesley lunged before they could get their bearings and wrestled them into a secure hold without too much resistance.

“Now,” I spoke to Max and the bonobo now hanging anxiously around his knees, “We're going out the front, and you either come along or I'll leave you here. Understood?”

Neither seemed inclined to protest, so I looked over to Lesley for the okay. She nodded.

“On the count of three,” I called, but we'd barely got to one when a fireball nearly took out one of the supporting beams, and Sigurd jumped to his feet.

“Fuck it, just go!” he yelled and shot towards the doorway, the rest of us following as fast as we could.

Heading for the Range Rover, we stopped as soon as we'd got to a semblance of cover. Without handcuffs, me and Lesley had to content with just shoving the guys against the ground as hard as we could and explaining just how stupid an idea it would be for them to move. A crackle like thunder made me peek my head out of cover and I saw, I shit you not, the actual roof of the barn lifting off and coming back down in a crash.

It was quiet for a long time. I'd just thought about how Nightingale and Aurelius were hopefully out of the barn by the time the roof went down, when there was a series of crashes back at the bungalow. A sound of breaking glass, a heavy metallic thump as a gas container hit the ground – and nothing.

I'd covered my head and ears the best I could, and as the nothing continued I turned to Lesley. I got as far as “D'you think” when the fucking thing exploded and rocked the Rover behind us. My ears ringing, I could just about make out a woman's voice screaming in rage before being cut off by a series of thuds.

Once the ground had stopped shaking from the explosion, I heard Varvara speak again. “Enough, enough. We surrender.”

Lesley and I took this as a sign that it was safe to come out of cover. The farmyard was a landscape of destruction. The bungalow itself was technically still standing, although in two separate pieces. Between them, where the wall had collapsed in on itself, I saw the forms of Aurelius and Nightingale emerging from the rubble.

At first glance Nightingale appeared to be no more than mildly inconvenienced by the whole affair, the way he would be by a speck of dust on his suit, which he'd through some miracle managed to keep completely immaculate throughout the battle. Then I noticed Aurelius and felt the cold prick of sweat on the back of my neck.

On a day to day basis it was easy to forget how big Aurelius was, spend as he did most of his time lurking inconspicuously a step or two behind Nightingale. But the fact of the matter was, at his full height his head nearly reached Nightingale's waist. Add to that a mouth full of sharp meat-rending teeth and paws the size of your head, and in Varvara's position I'd be near to pissing myself.

He stopped a few steps from her and gave a short, hoarse growl. From what I could see, Varvara was not armed apart from her obvious magic skills, so it took me a while, but then I saw the dark band unwinding from around her arm and slithering to the ground.

“All right, fine. We're done, you can stop,” her daemon spoke in a smooth, equally regionless voice. Aurelius placed a paw on the ground next to his head and looked back to Nightingale.

“Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina,” he said and paused to wait for Aurelius.

“And Mstislav,” Aurelius added.

“We are arresting you for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, aiding and abetting before, during and after the fact,” Nightingale took a small breath, “and no doubt a great many other crimes.”

He paused and I saw Aurelius's tail twitch until Lesley realised to fill in the rest of the caution. Varvara's rights read, Nightingale, who'd clearly come more prepared than me and Lesley, passed me a pair of handcuffs and let me do the honours while Aurelius kept an eye on Mstislav.

It was going to be one interesting ride to the Essex Police station.

\- - -


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three little snippets centered around Nightingale's shooting, starting from the end of Chapter 9 of RoL, because my preferred way of showing love for characters is write them injured, sad and distressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dr Walid's daemon is a Scottish crossbill.

Just looking at the helmet made me feel like a tit. Adelaide kept picking at the padding of the jacket, sharing in my pre-embarrassment of having to wear the ridiculous getup. I could feel Aurelius watching me, but I wasn't good enough at reading his body language yet to tell if he was laughing at me or not. Nightingale sure as hell wasn't going to have any tells.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked him anyway.

“You do your bit, and I'll do mine,” he said.

I completed my transformation into a person-sized biro and turned on the Airwave to get the go-ahead from Seawoll, who'd got stuck with overseeing this whole affair and was more than happy to just get it over with. The Airwave off and secured, I turned to Nightingale, when the shadows next to the stage door suddenly solidified into a man holding a gun.

Adelaide reacted before I could and took off from my shoulder, but even she wasn't quick enough to warn Nightingale.

The thing about gunshots is that in reality they're much less dramatic than TV would have you believe. The main difference between them and a backfiring car, for instance, is what follows after – if you hear screaming, it usually means some poor sod got shot. As a police officer, you're trained to assess the situation and not to focus on the screaming, which was probably the only thing that kept me functional once Aurelius realised what was happening.

Over the anguished howling, I saw more than heard the man speak. “That's the way to do it,” he said and winked.

I grasped for the steadiest forma I could think of and formed _impello_ almost before I realised what I was doing. The shooter lifted slightly off the ground and started toppling over. There was a muffled snap as his ankle twisted into an unnatural angle, followed by screams of pain, which was when I realised to let the spell go. His gun had fallen to the ground, and Adelaide was quick to get her claws on it and push it away from the man and his daemon. I gave the black poodle a cautious look, but as it seemed content to just placidly wag its tail at me, I wasted no time giving its human a good kick to the head. Just to be safe.

I should have secured both of them to await collection, but with Nightingale bleeding on the street that would have to remain second priority. Aurelius's call made me turn on my heel.

“Peter! _Help_ him, please!”

I reached for my Airwave only to remember it had been fried by the _impello_ , and our back-up's position wasn't close enough to have been alerted by the gunshot. I felt a moment of overwhelming helplessness at the sight of Aurelius, his tail swishing anxiously, ears pressed back against his skull, looking as small as I'd ever seen him. Adelaide landed next to us, having deemed the gunman and his daemon non-threats for now, and hesitated whether or not to approach Aurelius in consolation.

 _The whistle._ The thought must've come to us at the same time, because Adelaide suddenly turned to look at me, but I was already searching through my pockets before she could say a word. The shrill sound rang through the streets, shaking loose vestigial memories of some collective constabulary of the past. Or that's what it felt like. That or an adrenaline overdrive.

I heaved one more deep breath into the whistle and then leaned over to check on Nightingale. His pulse was steady, if understandably elevated, but his breathing was getting worse with every passing second.

“Sir, just keep breathing,” I said, sounding much more confident than I was feeling. “It's a habit you don't want to break.”

In my peripheral vision I was aware of Adelaide having made a decision and hopped onto Aurelius's back – she was murmuring something into his ear too faint for me to make out, her claws burrowed into the ruff of his neck.

After what felt like far too long, I could hear sirens in the distance.

\- - -

Since I was for all intents and purposes stuck in operational limbo until Nightingale woke up, the least I could do for my own peace of mind was make sure he pulled through. The officer on guard outside the ICU room checked my warrant card while Adelaide and his magpie daemon exchanged brief greetings – birds of a feather, if you'll excuse a tepid pun.

The room itself was almost unnervingly quiet. The only calming thing about it was being able to hear Nightingale's steady breathing, this time without the bubbling wet sounds of an open chest wound. Otherwise he appeared, if possible, even paler than the last I saw him.

Adelaide perched on the foot of the bed, and I stepped carefully around the sleeping form of Aurelius curled up on the floor. I was wary of waking him up, as he had undoubtedly watched over Nightingale to the point of exhaustion. Still it felt like some gesture was required, so after a quick check of the door to preserve my English modesty I reached for the limp hand lying atop the covers. Warm, pulse steady, reassuringly alive.

For a moment I imagined catching a whiff of cold pine forest and I blinked my eyes open, not having noticed even closing them. I must've been running close to a day without sleep. I swayed over to an utterly uninviting hospital chair and flopped down. The last thing I remember is Adelaide looking at Aurelius in uncharacteristic dejection, and then I drifted off into dreamless sleep.

At some point I must've woken up for a minute, though I wouldn't call it being really awake. I stared hazily at a small capuchin monkey for what was in retrospect probably a rudely long time until the pair noticed me and nudged Dr Walid. He barely needed to tell me to continue sleeping that I'd nodded off again.

The second time I woke up feeling slightly less like death warmed over. Some time during the night Adelaide had snuggled into my lap and buried her face in the crook of my arm. There was an inviting smell of coffee in the air. I gently extricated my arms and searched for the source of the smell. I didn't have to look far – Dr Walid shoved a large cardboard mug of latte into my field of vision which I gratefully accepted.

As I sipped my scalding hot coffee, Adelaide was starting to stir in my lap. I mumbled a warning as she nearly slapped one wing right into my face and she shuffled off in apology to where Walid's crossbill Oighrig was bringing Aurelius up to date.

“How is he?” I asked for my own benefit.

Walid gave a short humourless laugh. “He was shot in the chest. That kind of thing's bound to slow you down.” He looked at me and his expression softened. “He'll live. He's breathing on his own, that's a good sign.”

I nodded dumbly to myself and looked at the trio of daemons. Aurelius was showing no symptoms, which meant Nightingale's condition couldn't be that life-threatening anymore. I kept thinking about this while I finished my coffee.

I asked Walid if he could get back back into the Folly. He smiled ruefully and shook his head. I asked if he could get me an internet access. That, he said, he could do.

\- - -

At least this time I'd had a good night's sleep before visiting the hospital. It was also about the only improvement to our situation; it took conscious effort not to flex my jaw muscles whenever I thought about Lesley.

Side effect of being sleep deprived during my first visit was having no clear memory which room Nightingale was being kept in. That and hospital interiors not being the most exciting or imaginative area in the world of architecture. Finally, fifth time being the new charm, I chanced on the right door.

The room had lost some of that palliative care air on account of having an actually awake person in it, but it was still quiet enough that I felt like I should whisper.

“Inspector?” I said instead, like a normal person. “You wanted to see me?”

I stepped further into the room. Adelaide took flight and alighted on the edge of the bed, where Aurelius greeted her with a brief nuzzle. I dutifully ignored this as I sat next to her, and Nightingale seemed happy to follow my lead.

His voice, when he spoke, was just a whisper, words forced out one by one.

“Got shot.”

It wasn't really a question so I just nodded. “Yes, I know. I was there,” I said. Not something I particularly wanted to be reminded of. Adelaide hopped closer to me and I reflexively ran my fingers down her back.

“Shot before,” Nightingale said.

Huh. Well, years in the police, kind of an occupational hazard. “Really, when?”

“War,” came the answer, and my thoughts ground to a halt. In my head I quickly scrolled through a list of conflicts a man of Nightingale's generation might have participated in.

“Which war was this?” I asked.

“Second,” he said.

That took a moment to decrypt, mainly because my mind refused to consider the possibility. “The Second _World War_ ,” I said incredulously. When he didn't contradict this, I went on, “What were you in – the baby brigade?”

But even as I was speaking my brain was piecing together fragments of memories, little things here and there. Someone _less touched_ , Wallpenny had said. _Just you ask him about the year of his birth_. The trip to Thames upstream. Nightingale and the Old Man of 1914.

Holy shit.

I looked to Aurelius, but there was nothing in his countenance to suggest Nightingale was lying. “How old are you?” I finally asked.

“Old,” he said, and his next words halfway disappeared into a whisper. “Turn... century.”

“Turn of the century?” I clarified, and he nodded. “You were born at the turn of the century – the twentieth century?” I was repeating myself, I know, but in my defence I was kind of sorting my way through the cognitive rubble of a metaphorical bombshell. In retrospect it's curious that I never once stopped to consider if my governor was simply insane – I believed every word from him.

“You're over a hundred years old?” I said, hoping I didn't sound half as hysterical as I was feeling. Nightingale's wheezing laughter at that didn't exactly help me calm down. I swallowed.

“Is this natural?” I asked. What I wanted to say was _is this a wizard thing_ because I was not even remotely ready to have that conversation with my parents. I felt no small amount of relief when Nightingale shook his head, but that still didn't explain anything.

“Do you know _why_ this is happening?” I tried asking, but all he knew was not to look the gift horse in the mouth, in not so many words. There were a thousand more questions I wanted to ask, but this was neither the place nor the time for them, so I reigned in my curiosity and gave him the most reticent rundown of the Opera House riots I could manage. I tried to banish the memory of Lesley's ruined face, of Sigurd's mindless snarling, and swallowed down the _can we get them back_ before it crossed my lips. I had to put my hand on Adelaide's back to stop her from picking at the sheets. Aurelius was giving us a funny look but said nothing, probably out of shared concern of not wanting to tire out Nightingale.

Since our initial plan was now out the window, or more accurately, stuck in intensive care, I proposed a Plan B. Up until now Nightingale had just been patiently listening to me, but now his expression turned alarmed and Aurelius shot to his feet.

“No,” he said. “It's too dangerous.”

“It has to be done,” I insisted. “He's not going to stop on his own, and there's no one else to stop him.”

I half-regretted that last part when Nightingale got this downcast look on his face. He undoubtedly needed no reminder of the looming emptiness left by his late colleagues. Finally he took a deep breath.

“Thomas,” Aurelius cut in before Nightingale could say a word. “They can't–”

“Tell them,” Nightingale said to him. Aurelius pressed his ears back and for a moment it looked like he was going to protest; then he turned to me and Adelaide and started explaining, slow and careful to stress the risk we were facing, how to perform haemomancy. It sounded about as bad as I'd expected and about twice as complicated. Still, I followed him all right up until the part about spirit guides.

“Which would be...?” I ventured. Aurelius looked oddly chagrined.

“Molly will see to that,” he said. This was in no way helpful.

Adelaide ruffled her feathers. “See to it how?” she asked.

“Daemon,” Nightingale whispered, having otherwise remained quiet throughout the instructions. Me and Adelaide looked at him in surprise, and after a moment's silence Aurelius continued.

“Once you're through, you'll need to follow her daemon to find your way. He'll act as your spirit guide.”

I stared at him. To my knowledge, Molly didn't _have_ a daemon – at least I'd never seen one, and neither had Adelaide.

“I didn't know she had one,” Adelaide said quietly, taking the words out of my mouth. Aurelius bristled at this, and even Nightingale frowned at me.

“Of _course_ she does. What do you think she is?” Aurelius said, sounding genuinely upset, and Adelaide had the good grace to look a bit shamefaced.

“Okay, so we follow her daemon to Wallpenny's bones,” I said to break the tension. “But for all this to work, I still need to find a way back into the Folly.”

Aurelius turned thoughtful at this. “This is Tyburn's doing, isn't it?” he said and shook his head pensively. “Knowing her, a direct confrontation is unlikely to change her mind...”

“Her mother,” Nightingale interrupted.

“Mama Thames?” I said. “Why would she overrule Tyburn in my favour?”

“Pride,” he whispered.

“You want us to beg?” Adelaide said indignantly.

“Not her pride,” Aurelius said slowly, taking in Nightingale's words, and turned back to us. “Yours.”

After talking through the last few details of the plan, I said I had a favour of a favour to call in and stood to leave. Before I got to the door, though, I heard Aurelius calling my name.

“Peter,” he said and paused for a beat. “Be careful. Both of you.”

I nodded. “We will be.” I checked that Nightingale was as good as asleep before adding, “And you look after him.”

Once we were back outside in the corridor, I turned to Adelaide. “Did you know?” I asked. She tilted her head at me. “About the ageing thing?” I specified.

“What? No,” she said. “Aurelius never told me anything. Though it explains a lot, doesn't it?”

Yes, it did. And raised twice as many questions at the same stroke. But this wasn't the time to examine any of those; this was the time to go negotiate with a family of goddesses and hunt down a revenant.

I really had no idea what I was getting into with this apprentice business, it turns out.


End file.
